Proof positive that you can make a genre film that has nothing to do with Earth and take the box office by storm? Star Wars.

And yet I recall discussion at the time that Alderaan was deliberately made a blue planet to remind us that it could have just as easily been Earth.

We still associate ourselves with the 'humans' in Star Wars.

We only really cared about the Ewok planet because our heroes were there.

I care about Romulus and Vulcan being destroyed because I'm involved in the mythos but my non-Star Trek husband couldn't care less about them.
I also didn't care about the people on Veridian 3.

When we hear about an overseas disaster it sometimes only makes the news here if our fellow countrymen were involved.
I hate to be mean but the massacre in Kenya recently only became of 'real interest' on the news because citizens from our country were killed.

My point was about the general fallacious reasoning of thinking that Earth had to be in danger for Joe Sixpack to care about the film.

Star Wars: Joe Sixpacks came out in droves to see a movie that took place "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away"...no mention of Earth, and nobody cared.